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Monday, February 20

Diverse Characters - C + D

INTRODUCTION:

There’s been a lot of
talk about adding diverse characters to fictional books. Most of the time, this
is about including people of color if you’re a Caucasian writer, but all
writers can add diverse characters to their books. And why stop at race? In
this series, I’m going to list all sorts of diverse characters.

Note: I'm not knowledgeable about all types of people, so I'm skipping my usual tips in favor of letting others share their knowledge. See below

**I won't be able to list them all, so here's a list of ethnic groups...with a list of even more lists at the bottom of the page. lol

51 comments:

The MMC in my current romance WIP is a divorced man.After researching relationship and advice articles, a divorced person is more likely to have shallow, just sex relationships with the opposite sex. Distrust them, especially if it was a nasty divorce. Have a combative, volatile post relationship with their ex, which might sometimes color their view of other men/women they'll meet/date.C- cannibalD- DJ

Just about all of my characters are left-wing Democrats (or Socialists) like I am, since it's easiest to write about people with my own political values. I also have a few Deaf characters. There's a whole debate about Deaf culture, both within the Deaf community itself and the wider population. Many Deaf people are perfectly happy with using Sign Language, and are against cochlear implants for the same reason those of us in the neurodiversity community are deeply offended and hurt at the idea of "curing" or "preventing" autism and Asperger's. When this is how you've always been, and there's a whole culture and community to go along with it, there's no reason to want to lose that uniqueness and be just like everyone else. It's not like trying to cure cancer.

In a sequel idea I have pretty much all of the characters are college students, plus there's a new character who's a child (I think she'll be fun to write!).I never thought about writing a deaf character but I did take sign language in college so I'd probably be a few steps ahead with research since we learned a lot about the culture, as well.

I'm a Canuck Through and through:) I always find it funny that we are portrayed as apologetic and always nice. If you have ever travelled on the 401 from Niagara Falls to Toronto, you will not think we are very nice. My mom is German but my dad grew up near Algonquin Park who became a lumberman and worked in the park during the 1930's. In fact, I grew up on a sawmill and used to play on the logpiles and the sawdust pile. Yes, my dad did own a lumberjack jacket which I still have and he always had to wear a tuque which had to have a Pom Pom on it.

I'm a diverse character (from Canada) ;) This is interesting Chrys and a great reference if our stories need some spicing up with secondary characters. I often enjoy films with eccentric supporting characters. They can add so much to the story...same in books.

College students is a topic I'm very familiar with, seeing as how I teach college students. And there's definitely a lot of diversity within that group, everything from what their lives are like outside of class to what kinds of careers they want to pursue (as well as how they're pursuing them).

My debut novel, "Spiral of Hooves, opened in Canada and had a Canadian as one of main characters - plus a heroine with diabetes. I briefly lived in Canada but had to research the diabetes as heroine was a sportswoman. Sequel features cowgirls/rodeo riders.

Although I have a disability, I've never written a character in a wheelchair - except in a short story, and they guy had my disease as did someone in another. Are demons diverse? Debutantes?

Some of the best advice I've received about writing characters of another race is to not go out of your way to make them different than any other character you might write. Same with characters who are in same-sex relationships: they experience the same ups and downs of love and married life as those who are cis straight.

How about Chemists? We're always portrayed as the nerds on cop shows or the idiots who accidentally cause all the plagues and environmental disasters in the movies. In reality, most of us just stay home and blow up stuff in our basements.